Saturday, October 18, 2014

Creative Disobedience

October 19, 2014

Dear Friends,

All days are gifts, time boundaried packages of life. Today
is a sabbath-shaped day filled with quiet sunlight and the silent brilliance of
autumn color. I thought (again) this morning how oddly language and experience
sometimes collide. The intensity of the golds and purples and reds causes me to
think, “The trees are shouting with joy and celebrating harvest,” but at the
same time I sense all around me a profound stillness that foreshadows winter’s
silence and the coming snow. How can
this day be so utterly silent when at the same time all around me Creation in
full color is shouting, “Glory!! Glory!! God is good!!”?

I had intended today’s blog to resume with you
discussion of either the forgiveness project I’m teaching, or some ideas about
the significance of neurological functioning in our experience of discipleship
(the perhaps-may-become-a-book I’m
working on).

You have been rescued from this fate—I see you smiling—by
a friend who sent me an excerpt from one of John Shea’s books. Reading this led
to a sobering insight into the story Mark tells us about Jesus curing a leper
(Mark 1:40-50). I want to share something of that insight.

The Torah-prescribed world of the leper was a grim one
of relentless isolation. Leviticus required that the leper live alone in a
dwelling “outside the camp,” the sentence of life-long excommunication from
community. The leper was required to clearly communicate his status by wearing
torn clothes, disheveled hair, and to cry out from behind a face covering, “Unclean!!
Unclean!!” so that no unsuspecting by passer would be contaminated.

The pain of such exclusion from human connection was
perhaps one of the most terrible aspects of the disease, but there was, if
possible, even further pain in the requirement that the leper himself maintain
this isolation through self-identification. Think about it: if any person
chanced to come physically into the leper’s contaminated space the leper
himself was required to announce his status: “Unclean!! Unclean!”

In addition to self-policing his isolation, the leper,
by default, was forced to participate in the social erasure of his identity.
The legally required formula prescribed only the brutal effect of the disease: “Unclean!
Unclean!” There was no provision nor precedence for him to say, “Unclean!
Unclean! My name is John, and I am a leper.”

Many lepers carried wooden clappers that they sounded as
they walked, warning all within hearing to avoid contact with them. Rebel that
I am, I like to think that perhaps there were times when as a leper sounded the
clapper that proclaimed him “Unclean!!” that he said under his breath, “And my
name is John.”

The leper in Mark’s story had broken the rules and had directly
approached Jesus. The leper knelt, and said pleadingly, “If you will, you can
make me whole.”

Jesus, Mark tells us, was moved by compassion for the
suffering man. Jesus then, in turn, also broke the rules. He reached out His hand and touched the man!!

Having touched the man, Jesus said gently, “I will make
you well. Be healed.” At Jesus's command, Mark tells us, the leprosy instantly
disappeared.

Jesus then instructed the man to go to the temple,
taking his gift, and to undergo the prescribed procedures that would enable the
priest to declare him clean (and, in consequence, permit him to re-enter his
community).

Then Jesus cautioned the man to do as he had been instructed and to talk to no one along the way. One
translation reports that Jesus gave him a strong warning; another says that
Jesus sternly warned him and immediately sent him away. At any rate Jesus was
very clear: don’t say a word about what happened here.

Mark, with characteristic brevity, then reports that the
former leper obediently went to do as he had been told, but that this obedience
was accompanied by a flagrant disobedience
that had disastrous results.

On his way to the temple, the man spread the news
of his healing everywhere, telling everyone what had happened to him, freely
reporting the healing he had received through Jesus.

The predictable result promptly occurred: crowds of
people gathered around Jesus in such numbers that Jesus could not go openly
into a town. Jesus stayed out in unpopulated areas away from the city, Mark
reports, then adds that the people came out and found Him anyway.

Thoughtlessly, over the years I had assumed that the reason Jesus
stayed in the country was the size and possibly rowdy behavior of his
followers. John Shea gave me a sobering alternative explanation.

Jesus, having touched the leper, was Himself now under
the Levitical law that excluded Him from community. As the leper had been,
Jesus was now: forbidden to enter into the city. The healed leper could go
openly into the city and to the temple; the One who had healed him must now
keep His distance from the people He had come to teach and heal.

It is a stark graphic,
a shadow of Isaiah’s description of the suffering servant who carried the grief
and the sorrows of humankind alone outside the camp.

Shea thinks that it is possible that the healing process
in every instance was costly to Jesus—that the power that left Jesus when He
healed the hemorrhaging woman went out of Him at other times of healing as well
although not specifically noted by the Gospel writers. Shea suggests that it
was Jesus’s constant reliance upon the Father (I do the will of my Father) and
His hours spent in prayer than enabled Him to be replenished and restored, and
to return to the people who needed Him.

The sticking point for me came, however, with the realization of
the way in which I had over years of reading, half-excused the disobedience of
the leper. After all, he was just sharing his good news, glorifying Jesus and
providing evidence of His powerful healing credentials and His probable
Messiahship. Surely God couldn’t be too upset about that behavior!!

The consequences of the leper’s disobedience, however,
were far from trivial. While his disobedience appeared to be God-glorifying
activity, in reality his failure to obey resulted in serious trouble for Jesus,
and (hypothetically at least) disruption and interruption of the work of the
Kingdom.

I insist repetitively that intentions do not control
consequences.Mark’s story makes this
clear (again), and challenges me to keep things simple and clear in relation to
the Spirit’s leading. It is not my prerogative to revise the directions I have
been given.

Blessed, Jesus said, are those who hear my words and do them.

Thinking with you that we might all profit from prayer for specific, simple obedience. It occurs to me that obedience is
likely to be more profitable for my soul and for the work of the Kingdom than
any creative license to rewrite God’s memos that I may assume.